#Tree Infesting Insects Love the City Heat (Op-Ed) This article was published originally at The Abstract.
The publication contributed the article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Fracking or hydraulic fracturing operations by the oil and gas industries can emit significant amounts of methane.
and roasted a process that rids the nut of toxic oils and leaves its shell brittle and easy to remove.
Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods And in addition to the cashew's known nutritional benefits researchers have explored also the possibility of using the toxic oil found in the nut's shell as an antibiotic.
According to the researchers using cashew oil isn't an entirely new idea as the acid was used at one time in Brazil to treat leprosy.
Cashew nut oil as well as the leaves and bark of the cashew tree have also been used in traditional medicines in communities around the world to treat everything from toothaches to diabetes.
and are often gluten-free they may be fried in oils that are saturated high in and/or trans fats and many brands of chips are high in sodium.
Expanding domestic oil production will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas and significantly reduce the billions of dollars we send abroad each year.</
we do not want to use soybeans for diesel oil or corn for ethanol. That is not a good use of land.</
When the government steps up and it says that there is a requirement that you are going to have to take sulphur out of diesel fuel,
although the indirect impact could be even higher because of massive emissions from expanding palm-oil plantations, particularly in Indonesia.
which produce more emissions than conventional oil because of the energy-intensive extraction process. The low-carbon fuel standard could also prove a barrier to coal-based fuels,
Both groups clash with members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries who worry about falling oil demand as the world shifts towards renewable energy
and who want international aid to diversify their economies. Then there are major developing-world emitters such as Brazil, China, India and South africa.
only if oil was $90 a barrel or higher. The price of oil is around $65-70 a barrel.
One company looking to bring down costs is based Novozymes in Bagsv  rd, Denmark. In February, Novozymes launched its first commercially available enzymes for cellulosic-ethanol production,
and oil refiner Sinopec in Beijing to develop a process that uses maize stalks and leaves,
whose seeds yield a diesel-like oil. Many had seen it as a potential saviour for marginal lands,
More than 130 companies were in the race, dominated by D1 Oils of London, which in 2007 had landed a $160-million deal with oil giant BP.
But this July, BP and D1 announced that their deal was off. And of 140 investments made in biofuels so far this year,
to produce the same amount of oil (W. Gerbens-Leenes et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.
The split between D1 Oils and BP has hurt jatropha's reputation as a good business investment,
In the meantime, D1 Oils has shifted from planting jatropha to focusing on basic research including starting a breeding programme to develop seeds with high oil yields
The farmers are guaranteed a price for the oil seeds they produce and so have an incentive to tend the crop
Zelt says that seeds optimized to produce more oil will be entering the market in the coming months,
not only reduce emissions and save oil but also result in consumer savings of roughly $3, 000 over the lifetime of a vehicle produced in 2016.
and are estimating that this policy will save 1. 3 million barrels per day of oil in 2020.
and produces higher-energy fuels that are interchangeable with current petroleum products. The next step is to scale the process up
and South San francisco-based Solazyme, LS9 struggled for funding in 2008 and early 2009 because of the drop in oil prices and the economic downturn,
including a strategic partnership with oil giant Chevron last September. The company plans to open a commercial-scale demonstration plant later this year.
Nature Newsthe burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil releases carbon dioxide that alters the balance of carbon isotopes naturally found in the environment an effect that is now being found in food,
is released that carbon from the burning of oil or coal, which has very little carbon-13 compared to that found naturally in the atmosphere,
The US Department of the interior has requested a scientific review of the possible ecological impact of drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the Arctic.
US President Barack Obama announced plans on 31 march to expand offshore oil and gas drilling,
dripping around 2 tonnes of oil and destroying coral.
Ardi may be more ape than human: Nature Newsa fight has broken out over attempts to drag'Ardi'-the oldest hominid skeleton found-out of the woods where her discoverers say she lived.
The oil spewing into the Gulf of mexico was stemmed partially this week, after BP managed to force a siphon tube into the leaking wellhead pipe.
separating safety and environmental operations from its oil-leasing arm. For more on the spill, see pages 274-275.
Nature Newsto many people, modern agriculture, with its industrial-scale farms and reliance on petroleum-based fertilizers, may seem a necessary evil one that has fed a growing human population while causing
BP's latest efforts to staunch the flow of oil from its wellhead in the Gulf of mexico have failed,
The'top kill'operation pumping mud into the gushing well was followed by a'junk shot'to block the oil leak with debris. Neither attempt worked.
-osc. no/9 june The 2010 Millennium Technology Prize will be awarded in Helsinki. go. nature. com/Eknzdu Number crunch 2 million-3 million The number of litres per day of oil
Oil gushed into the Gulf of mexico at a staggering rate from the damaged riser that had attached the platform to the well.
Chemical dispersants to break up the oil were applied at one of the highest rates in history.
Some of the oil was trapped well below the Gulf's surface, with undetermined effects. It seemed as though the spill might drag on forever.
but to an episode three decades earlier and about 1, 000 kilometres south, at an exploratory oil well known as Ixtoc I, operated by Mexico's national petroleum company Petr  leos Mexicanos (PEMEX.
it spewed some 475,000 tonnes of oil into waters northwest of Ciudad del Carmen on Mexico's Yucat ¡
His mission was to collect samples of any oil that might remain, and to interview local fishermen about their experiences during and after the spill.
the tide pools here were thick with oil. Development and road building have changed the shoreline significantly since then.
whether they exhibit the chemical signatures of oil from the Ixtoc I well. It is unlikely that the oil is having any significant ecological effects after weathering away for so long,
but the residue is a reminder of what the region experienced when oil first came ashore.
Thirty years ago, most fishing villages were isolated so that locals knew little about the disaster playing out just a few kilometres away.
to look for oil among mangrove trees. A few kilometres from the village, the team found patches of what looked like highly weathered oil.
Then Ch ¡vez called out, Hey Wes, there's a stinky one over here. The 2-metre by 1-metre mat of tar smelled distinctly of asphalt.
but that more productive ecosystems such as mangrove swamps or salt marshes the closest analogue to mangroves in the northern Gulf retain oil indefinitely.
it too generated subsurface oil plumes. That oil made its way around the Gulf, and at one point some beaches in Texas took an unexpected oil hit after it mixed with surface waters close to shore.
You didn't see anything and then all of a sudden you had oil on the beaches, Jernelã v says.
In broader terms, Tunnell, Jernelã v and other researchers familiar with Ixtoc I agree that its most important lesson is to continue studying the Deepwater horizon spill
and its impact especially after the oil stops flowing and the world's attention turns elsewhere so as not to be caught short next time.
Steve Murawski, chief science adviser for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration's National Marine Fisheries Service, says that he
Many fear that the oil will come their way, and they sympathize with those already affected.
on 9 november, oil group Chevron of San ramon, California, said it would buy the firm in a US$4. 3-billion deal.
Nature Newsbuffeted by the economic crisis and a drop in the oil price, US producers of corn ethanol are encountering increasing scepticism from the legislators on Capitol hill even as producers of the'greener'cellulose-derived ethanol struggle to move beyond basic research and development.
citing oil giant BP's decision to purchase cellulosic ethanol technology from the Verenium Corporation,
Oil-spill budget Scientists have welcomed a long-awaited peer-reviewed US government report on the short-term fate of the oil from the Deepwater horizon spill in the Gulf of mexico this summer.
the report supersedes an'oil budget calculator'published in August, which was reviewed not peer and was criticized for its lack of information about how calculations were carried out, uncertainties in estimates and overly optimistic press presentation.
although oil experts note a paucity of solid data on which to base estimates. See go. nature. com/j3ixm6 for more.
Oil and gas companies can still drill in the area, but federal agencies have to ensure that proposed activities don't jeopardize polar bears and their habitat.
a Malaysia-based company involved in palm-oil production, and will look at changes to biodiversity and the resources and processes provided by the ecosystem as the forest is logged
Pollution fight US oil giant Chevron of San Remon, California, says that it will appeal a US$8. 6-billion fine imposed for environmental damages by an Ecuadorian court on 14 february,
and parts of Borneo) are the world's largest suppliers of palm oil, accounting for 87%of global production in 2008.
Given the rather coarse resolution of that satellite data, only large palm-oil plantations with closed canopies are easily identifiable,
and oil and gas operations Ethanol subsidies The US Senate has voted to end costly federal subsidies for producing ethanol from maize (corn).
and olive DNA, possibly from olive oil, in six of them. Other'hits'included DNA from legumes, ginger, walnut and juniper and from herbs such as mint, thyme and oregano.
oil and honey were traded, as well as fruit, fish, meat and resin. He says the DNA approach offers great promise for advances in terms of analysing amphora contents from archaeologically documented wrecks,
COMING UP4-8 december The triennial World Petroleum Congress the'Olympics of the oil and gas industry'meets in Qatar.
RALSTON/AFP/Gettyalberta's oil-sands companies are required to reduce the intensity of their greenhouse-gas emissions under the province's emissions trading scheme.
It sets limits on the intensity levels of greenhouse gases emitted by Alberta facilities oil sands operations and coal-fired power plants,
accurate method for measuring the emissions from oil-sands tailing ponds, which store contaminated water, clay, sand and bitumen from oil-sands processing.
Many opponents of emissions trading programmes also argue that companies are likely to purchase carbon offsets instead of reducing emissions by adopting new technologies
For methane, the study identified 14 control measures that would target leakage from coal mining and oil and gas operations, emissions from landfills, wastewater systems, livestock manure and rice paddies.
Canadian oil sands: defusing the carbon bombenvironmentalists and many politicians have called the oil sands a planetary-scale threat as they fight to prevent further development of the resource.
Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart, both climate scientists at the University of Victoria in British columbia, listened to the rhetoric and decided to run some calculations.
Because of the energy-intensive process for producing oil from this region, it is true that greenhouse gas emissions are higher than average.
But their work underscores evidence that the environmental impacts of producing the oil sands are primarily local rather than global."
if all of the oil available in the Alberta reserves were to be burned. Their results suggest that complete development of the sands would boost the average global temperature by roughly 0. 36 °C,
But their calculations suggest that a full life-cycle analysis increases the overall emissions from oil sands by roughly 17%.
Oil from Norway and Saudi arabia is easy to produce and relatively clean in terms of overall emissions.
which is common in Nigeria the dirtiest conventional oils could be just as bad or even worse than crude from the oil sands.
A study published last week by researchers at Environment Canada in Toronto used satellite measurements to analyse emissions of nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide from the oil sands2.
in particular, have increased alongside oil development in recent years and are on par with emissions from individual coal-fired power plants.
and cooked to produce oil, the development has resulted also in concerns about water pollution and eventual reclamation.
In situ production, by contrast, uses steam injection to liberate the oil underground, which reduces surface disturbance but actually increases greenhouse-gas emissions as a result of higher energy consumption.
But barring a precipitous drop in oil prices or a sudden imposition of carbon regulations, Canada will probably find customers for its oil one way or another.
The Obama administration cited concerns about the route chosen for the first proposal, leaving the door open to a revised application down the road,
Canada is also investigating other options for piping the oil directly into international markets. Concerns about global warming in general and regulations in places like California and Europe have spurred scientists to tackle life-cycle emissions for the full suite of energy sources in recent years.
Oil-sands vote ends in deadlockan attempt to assign a carbon footprint to oil obtained from oil sands,
However, policy-makers are stuggling to achieve this for oil-sands oil. Canada is the main obstacle:
if it discriminates against oil sands by making the value separate from, and significantly higher than, that for oil from other sources.
The value being voted on was 107 grams of carbon dioxide equivalents per megajoule 23%higher than that for oil from conventional sources.
Canada holds the world s third-largest store of oil after Saudi arabia and Venezuela if the oil sands are included,
and it is keen to export the fuel, via US refineries, to Europe. Canada is also in the midst of negotiating a free-trade agreement with the EU. Spain
Italy, Poland and Estonia voted against the proposal, and the Scandinavian nations for it. However, the United kingdom, The netherlands and France home to oil giants BP, Shell and Total,
respectively and Germany all abstained, so the vote ended in deadlock.""The whole issue is blowing completely out of proportion,
They generally recognize the higher carbon footprint of oil extracted from oil sands, but do not single them out with a separate value.
Environmentalists agree that oil obtained from different sources should have different carbon footprints but few data are available on the actual emissions generated by other sources,
and that because oil-sand oil is known to generate more emissions, disincentives should be placed on its use.
According to most scientific studies including one by the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC used by the European commission to prepare an impact assessment and legislation biodiesel from palm oil,
soya bean and rapeseed causes a similar level of pollution to oil obtained from oil sands
The oil sands debate has no legal implications on the biofuel issue, and a decision on one has no direct bearing on the other.
That included around 650,000 hectares granted to two palm-oil giants; the move will affect the land and lives of more than one million Liberians.
The growing middle class, especially in Asia, is hungry for food, oil and minerals. Africa is most at risk
agricultural biotech giant Monsanto and retailer Walmart together with producers and environmentalists to negotiate environmental certification standards for products such as soya beans, palm oil,
soya and palm oil could have the greatest impact on carbon (see'Food versus forests').'With more than US$4 million in seed money from Norway, the consortium plans to announce an initial round of projects in the run-up to the UN Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de janeiro (Rio+20) in Brazil in June.
which has been working with Swiss food company Nestlã and the world's second-largest palm-oil producer, Golden Agri-Resources in Indonesia,
and stripping a palm-oil firm of a permit to develop carbon-rich peatland.""No other country has done anything like this,
But what remains is being cleared rapidly for palm-oil or wood-pulp plantations or is being logged re,
Sizer welcomed the government s move to retract a permit awarded to Kallista Alam, an Indonesian palm-oil company,
growing concerns about climate change, rising energy consumption and dependence on foreign oil  have prompted countries
Fluctuations in the price of oil also pose a challenge for the industry, says Wallace Tyner, an energy economist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
the price of oil must surpass US$120 per barrel, he says, which the US Energy Information Administration s Annual Energy Outlook 2012 suggests may not happen until 2035 if at all.
But wheat, rice and oil prices have not matched their 2008 highs so that will help to stave off a similar crisis,
The increase is driven by advances in the production of unconventional oil, such as that trapped in tight/shale formations. 6-10 july In Ottawa,
Palm-oil boom raises conservation concernspalm oil was touted once as a social and environmental panacea a sustainable food crop,
presenting evidence that palm-oil farming can cause damaging deforestation and reduce biodiversity, and that the oil s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
But even as the environmental case against it grows stronger, the palm-oil business is booming as never before."
"Oil palm is such a lucrative crop that there is almost no way to stop it, says William Laurance, a forest-conservation scientist at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia.
And on 28 Â June, the Malaysian palm-oil company Felda Global Ventures (FGV) earned US$3. 2 billion in the second-largest initial public offering (IPO) this year after Facebook,
Although Malaysia is now the world s second-largest producer of palm oil, it is running out of viable land for new oil-palm plantations, according to the US Department of agriculture.
Such expansion is driven by the steadily rising demand for palm oil, mainly from the food sector,
But the emerging biodiesel market is also thirsty for the oil. In principle, biodiesel made from palm oil could be environmentally friendly,
because the carbon dioxide released when it is burned is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows.
In January, after the US Environmental protection agency (EPA) found that palm-oil fuels emitted only 11-17%less greenhouse gas than diesel over their entire life cycle,
it suggested that the oil should not be classified as a renewable fuel. Although a public consultation on the matter concluded in April, the EPA has not set a date to issue its final ruling.
But the European union (EU) continues to encourage the use of fuels based on palm oil. The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10%by 2020
and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.
By 2020, around 40%of Ketapang will be given over to palm oil, up from 6%in 2007-08.
Palm oil would be much more sustainable if it were managed responsibly, says Nigel Sizer, director of the Global Forest Initiative at the World Resources Institute,
The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm oil (RSPO), an international nonprofit association based in Zurich, Switzerland, that brings together conservation groups
and palm-oil firms including FGV, says that it will not certify oil grown on land that was deforested to farm the crop.
But many are sceptical that the RSPO, which was established in 2004, can effectively police the industry s rapid growth."
But in the face of what Laurance calls"a green tidal wave of oil-palm expansion,
Material gains Oil and gas giant BP will invest US$100 Â million over ten years in a university-based research centre for advanced materials,
such as developing metal alloys that can work in deep-water drilling and membranes for purifying oil, gas, water and biofuels.
According to the commission's studies, rapeseed oil also known as canola oil meets the RED requirement, delivering greenhouse-gas cuts of at least 38%compared with conventional fuels,
The oil currently makes up over 80%of all vegetable oils used in European biofuels. However, a study published last month one of the most detailed so far attempted to replicate the commission's calculations
Arctic drilling stops Plans to drill for oil and gas resources off the coast of Alaska have been abandoned following damage to oil containers on the spill-cleanup barge Arctic Challenger,
oil company Shell announced on 17 Â September. The setback means that the mission no longer meets the safety requirements for a permit to drill specific wells. Shell will continue to bore exploratory top holes in the Chukchi sea in preparation for further drilling,
and implementing a new Renewable Fuel Standard that will save nearly 14 billion gallons of petroleum-based gasoline in 2022.
And all Americans can rest assured that the nation s security is no longer beholden to unstable but oil-rich regions half way around the world.
but instead to facilitate responsible use of all energy sources from oil and coal and natural gas, to nuclear and hydropower and biofuels, to wind and Solar energy development, economic growth,
Mexican scientists pin hopes on incoming presidentplummeting oil exports; a failing education system; and a six-year drug war.
and many saw Brazil as a model for how the world could shed its addiction to oil,
we are buying more oil and spending more on pollution-related health care, jokes Ildo Sauer,
who studies energy policy at the University of S £o Paulo and is a former director of the state oil giant Petrobras.
Other rules could target the oil and gas industry by limiting emissions from refineries and drilling sites.
which one of the company s oil platforms in the Gulf of mexico exploded. The deal follows a $4. 5-billion settlement last year by oil
-and-gas giant BP (see Nature 491,501; 2012). ) It includes $150 Â million each for the National Academy of Sciences and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation,
and Marathon Oil, based in Houston, Texas decided last week to cease shale-gas exploration activities in Poland.
Amazon plant discovery could yield green cash cropin a farmer s garden deep in the Peruvian Amazon in August 2012, Rainer Bussmann and Carlos Vega struck oil.
which produce oil rich in omega-3 fatty acids. But the pods of the new plant, later dubbed Plukenetia carolis-vegae,
Bussmann hopes that the healthy reputation of sacha inchi oil will provide the impetus for large-scale cultivation of both species
But even if sacha inchi oil does not turn out to be something that can be sold as a dietary supplement,
it could be marketed as a niche food oil. Bussmann, who happens to have a bottle of P. huayllabambana oil in his office,
says it is excellent in salads: the taste is nutty and green, evoking the flavours of peanut and cucumber.
Dietler concedes that some amphorae could have held olive oil or fish paste, but says that jars found at Lattera had typically been coated with pitch to help seal the ceramic.
because the pitch would have dissolved in oil and tainted its flavour. Oil amphorae generally had a very different shape
he adds.""By and large, archaeologists make a lot of assumptions about what was transported, says says Brendan Foley, a maritime archaeologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts,
Garth Lenz/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2013in'Oil spoils'by Garth Lenz, an aerial view shows the devastation caused by tar-sands mining in Alberta, Canada.
Garth Lenz speaks passionately about the negative impact that extraction of oil from tar sands has had on the landscapes of his native Canada;
this photograph is part of his True Cost of Oil project. To try to capture the scale of tar-sands operations in Alberta,
We ve mobilized the genes from algae that make some of these oils and put them into oilseed crops.
we ve been able to make oils that are as good as in some cases even better than fish oils.
The agency issued a preliminary determination that trans-fats in the form of partially hydrogenated oils should no longer be recognized"generally as safe,
Currently on leave from the University of Maryland in College Park, Williams has been chief scientist for oil-and-gas giant BP since 2010.
Pollution curbs On 23 Â February, Colorado lawmakers adopted the first regulations in the United states for reducing methane emissions from the oil and gas sector.
reduce US reliance on imported oil and boost rural economies. Yet just as the fuel is on the cusp of making it big,
These thermochemical methods can produce either a crude bio-oil or a stream of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas.
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